Contemporary Horsemanship Podcast

Clicker training requires a marker signal. This marker is usually a click from a handheld clicker or a tongue click. The marker signal tells the horse that what he is doing right now is what you wanted and he will be getting reinforcement soon. The signal creates a bridge between the behavior and reinforcement. It can be very hard to feed at the exact right moment when the behavior you want is hap...

My mustang Atlas recently injured his eye which required me to put two different medications in it four times a day. I used clicker training to get him to cooperate during this process. I discuss how I did this with him at liberty and what I learned from this experience.

Training horses with positive reinforcement is different than training using traditional training methods. There is a lot more attention to detail, planning, and arranging the environment. These are all little but important things that will make you more successful in your training. I’ll talk about these small things that I didn’t realize were so important when I started training with R+.

I see people releasing a pressure cue before they are getting the behavior they want happen often and in many different forms. For example, picking up on the reins and asking the horse to stop. The horse ignores the cue and keeps going. The rider thinks he’s done something wrong or let’s go of the pressure on the reins for another reason. The horse has inadvertently been given a release of pressur...

I wanted to do a revised version of my old episode on leading. I am always learning and adding new stuff to my training program and getting rid of old techniques or beliefs as I grow. I have definitely found what I consider to be the best way to teach a horse to lead and that is with a target. I’ll also talk about how to fix some common leading issues and why they happen in the first place.

There can be a lot of confusion about cues for both people and horses. Sometimes horses don’t respond to the cues we give them, sometimes horses do a behavior without a cue, and when the context changes (when you are in a new or different environment) the behavior can seem to fall apart. I’m covering what a cue is, how to train one, issues with cueing and what stimulus control is.

We can easily get wrapped up in why we want to show our horses. We can often forget how horse shows and other events feel like to the horse. Horse shows are filled with scary things that can cause a horse to be very stressed. I’ll talk about some important things that we should take into consideration and prep for while taking a horse somewhere new.

Shaping is done when using both negative and positive reinforcement. It is more often associated with positive reinforcement though. Shaping is when you reinforce small steps toward the behavior that you ultimately want. By reinforcing behavior that is close to what you want, the horse keeps trying and will be less frustrated.

I want people to have realistic expectations with horses. Everyone loses when a horse is promised to be bombproof and will never spook. I’m going to talk about why I think this is so dangerous and give some tips on what to really expect from a horse, bombproof or not.

We all get burn out and just need a break sometimes. There is a culture in the horse world that you must work with or ride your horse all the time, no matter how you or your horse feels. But instead of working just to get something done, there are lots of other things we can do while still getting a mental and physical break from working with horses. I’ll cover some of those options and why they a...

I’ve recently started participating in equine agility and I have really enjoyed training my horses through each course. I love that whips are not allowed, taking slack out of the rope takes points off of your score, and you are allowed to use food. I will expand on why I love these things and more reasons why I think horse agility is a fantastic sport and a step in the right direction for the hors...

Start buttons are a tool used in clicker training where the animal performs one before to let the handler know he is ready for another behavior. I have found start buttons to be very helpful in horse training. I’ll cover what start buttons are and how to use them.

Once the horse is ok with crossing and standing on a tarp, then you can start training the next two behaviors. I’ll explain the process of teaching a horse to be ok with having the tarp over his back and how to teach him to drag a tarp from the beginning.

The usual ways of training a horse to cross a tarp include chasing, pulling, and pressuring the horse until he does it. By forcing a horse to cross in this way you can very easily make going near the tarp a source of pain and fear, making your goal even harder. By using positive reinforcement the horse will be more willing to cross the tarp and will do so faster and easier than any other form of t...

All horses spook at some point. I’ll give you some tips on how to help your horse when he is afraid. Keeping the horse under threshold and slowly building their confidence is key.

Whips are a highly debated topic in the horse world. Much of the debate comes from tradition or opinion and not from science. I’m going to talk about the science behind how a whip functions in horse training. I’ll also cover some of the side effects that can happen when the whip is used improperly.

There is a lot of myths around why a horse licks and chews. The behavior is often explained as a horse showing that it is relaxed. Licking and chewing is actually a calming signal. I’ll explain what a calming signal is and how they function.

I’m explaining the science behind ‘relationship training’ or getting a horse’s focus to get them to relax. Then I’ll talk about the different types of clinics and how they effect horses. Finally I’ll give my thoughts on the movie Buck.

I use protected contact quite a bit in my training, especially for horses who are fearful or display potentially dangerous behaviors. By using protected contact I can still train the behaviors I want, while we both can have the space we need to feel safe. Once the behavior is trained I can then progress to free contact.

Most people overlook this critical piece of training with their horses. How the horse takes the treat and when are extremely important as this information tells the horse what behaviors are being reinforced. I’ll go into detail on how to teach a horse to take a treat properly and when to give the food.

This week I want to cover some common misconceptions about clicker training, also known as positive reinforcement.

There are many misconceptions out there on how natural horsemanship, R- or pressure works. I want to clear up some of those ideas and explain what is actually happening when using those types of training.

I thought I’d do a quick episode about my horses. I talk about them sometimes in training episodes but never really gave details about them. They are very important to me and are the reason I’ve learned so much in the last few years. Later I’ll do an update on them in the future about where they are in their training.

I’m talking about more human examples on how we learn through classical conditioning. But I want to connect these examples to the horse world so we can see how easily connections can be made in the horse’s mind and how classical conditioning is always working whether we notice it or not.

I share my opinions on how we can make three day eventing safer for horses and riders.